I didn't mean to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Weird things just seem to sort of happen to me nowadays. Last Thursday, for example, I stuck my head in the oven and waited for death; but instead I grew wings, flew to Heaven, and killed God. It was a whole thing. This might be the first one I can't come back from, though. I don't know how to feel about that.

It's dark, say the scientists, and I'd always go, Ooh yes of course it's dark, but I couldn't really comprehend it until now: icywet, limbs crumpled like an aluminum can from the pressure, and I can't see anything. It's so dark that there aren't any shapes dancing on the backs of my eyelids. It's so dark I don't know if I even have eyelids anymore. Around me I can feel things moving, beautiful things that can only exist in the dark. I take a few steps forward, wiggling my broken toes in the sand, reach out blindly and feel, by accident, the bones.

Once I start feeling the bones, I can't stop. It's as if they go on forever. Surrounding the bones is so much life, so many creatures feeding and fucking and blinking and winking and living little lives I'd have thought we have nothing to do with. I pull myself along the bones for what could be miles or meters, trying to map the whole of this ecosystem I've found.

When I listen closely, I can hear singing. The bones are a religion to these creatures, I realize, and the more that I feel with my hands—the more saltwater that enters my lungs—the better I can understand their hymn: Thank you, our God, for dying to save us. Thank you, we love you, we love you.

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